"Coming Back to Life", Readings and Practices

1/10 An Introduction to The Work that Reconnects

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In the first episode of this podcast Joanna Tomkins provides an introduction to "The Work That Reconnects" by Joanna Macy, a framework followed by a growing network of people willing to truly look at and honour their pain for the world, so that they can work towards "active hope", and take part in the "Great Turning", this historical moment we have been called to be part of.

It includes a reading of the core assumptions that motivate the Work That Reconnects (please see transcript below) and a brief introduction to its historical background.

Listen on. The following episodes, based on the book "Coming Back to Life", by Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown, will give you further insights into these concepts and will undoubtably provide relief to your feelings of grief and will inspire you to continue the work that you are doing, in reconnecting in your own way to your greater "ecological being", the one we all share, the one that represents our "interbeing".

This episode is also available as a post on her blog: http://gaiaspeaking.com/2021/04/13/the-core-assumptions-of-wtr/

This is Gaia Speaking. Thanks for Listening. 


The Core Assumptions of the Work That Reconnects: 

  1. Our Earth is Alive. It is our body.
  2. Our true nature is far more ancient and encompassing than the separate self designed by habit and Western Society.
  3. The Planet as a living system can know and see itself through us, behold its own majesty, tell its own stories and also respond to its own suffering.
  4. Our experience of moral pain for our world springs from our interconnectedness with all beings – including beings of all human cultures – from which also arise our powers to act on their behalf.
  5. Unblocking occurs when our pain for the world is not only intellectually validated, but also experienced and expressed.
  6. When we reconnect with life, by willingly enduring our pain for it, the mind retrieves it natural clarity.
  7. The experience of reconnection with the Earth community, human and other-than-human, arouses desire to act on its behalf.
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    "Coming Back to Life", Readings and PracticesBy Joanna Tomkins